User Comment Rodeo: Multiple Choice City

The UCR Mk.II picked up a hugely lucrative article about a social studies professor who forced her entire second year sociology class into taking a geography pop quiz. Just a purely innocent decision which had no loaded stakes, made by a disinterested, scientific-minded professor with no agenda up her sleeve – forced on a classroom of modern students. Said class failed dismally at accurately labeling countries, provinces, capitols, and even broad geographical regions. The UCR Mk.II almost crashed analyzing the over 200 comments. The irony sensor burned out too many times, and I had to deactivate it lest I ran out of spares.

It seemed to me (and still seems to me) a monstrous project, but I will gladly take it on. There is nothing more entertaining than watching idiots go at their bogeys, and watching the poor moderates waste their time. What's really important, in the end, is that everyone tends to just have fun. So kick back, get a stiff drink, forget how old or young you are, and indulge in some senseless ageism. And remember: more than 200 hundred comments resulted from poor test scores about an unrelated subject in what is a small sample of post-secondary students. This is, in more ways than one, an example of why the west is withering and how the internet is making it worse (or making it appear worse). Don't get offended, let's go on a rodeo:

The comments flew in fast and heavy. Reading them almost caved-in my sense of hope. It was brutal. I missed some doozies, no doubt, but there is never time to think when it comes to a User Comment Rodeo. There is only action. There is only the lassoing of choice screengrabs, and hoping they turn out to be priceless. I warn ye who would read this: this is going to be lengthy and uncomfortable, and the levels of ageism, ignorance, and bigotry unveiled herein will drive you into hysteria. If you had any faith, in the young or old, turn back now. The world needs your optimism more than ever. As for me: I don't care, I'm not even paid to do this. Maybe I'll get a shot or two in.

You know what's kind of depressing? You don't? I – Ah, fuck it. I prefer cuss-words anyway, since they make a solid point, frighten puritans and squares, and require almost no intelligence to be used effectively. The internet can still educate. It can also mislead, trivialize, infantilize, and stupefy. Reader, mark well the words of these and following User Comments. Note the vast problems they bring up, and their generally piss-poor sentence construction. Ah, the familiar smells of lazy rhetoric and half-baked idiocy. Is this crisis in education new? Is this a beautiful moment in our collective existence? Will the bleating objections of the masses lead to a new era of mental rigor?

These were the 'upvotes' in reddit-speak (RIP Swartz, I never knew ye, but you deserved better). These were the king comments. These were choice, juicy, apropos, and insightful beyond all the rest. Observe the beautiful spectre of ageism rising from the rabble. One can hardly blame students who are prejudged en masse as morons, merely for existing in a troubled and complex era and for their casual use of advanced electronic devices. It seems as if everyone has given up on them. Everyone except for the oilsands, that is – and when one is scientifically illiterate, one eats up greenwashing with both hands, and feels great about it. The modern explosion of ideologues is due to lack of mental rigor, but if education was so impeccable in the 50's, 60's, and 70's then why are so many middle-aged people so insufferable in their harmful, hateful, and ignorant opinions – why are they so vulnerable to fast-food politics, misinformation, and ideology? Look what they threw away to live comfortably. It's cute, because the coming generations get to live in not only mental, but also economical, physical, and environmental squalor. No wonder they don't give a fuck.

I am fairly sure touchy-feeling teaching is discouraged if not illegal at this point. Go ahead making excuses as if these kids exist in a vacuum in which their only responsibility is to become properly-educated, subservient workers in a stagnant and repressive economy. One teacher's complaints fall on the deaf ears of the burgeoning 'expert culture'. And when they cannot be failed – are legally barred from failing any course, test, or assignment – nothing in the world can save us from the Reality-TV Graduate Zombie Facebook Teens!

Snap! Snap, snap, snap, snap, snap! This poster just kills it. God damn! Perfect blend of trolling, truth, and mockery. Whatever this futile combat is about, there are still heroes in it.

That last post brings up an interesting idea. Is consumer culture (still) doing a great job of educating young people? After all, iPhones lose much of their appeal the further past the mental age of 20 a person really is. Thing is, you can't simply teach maturity, so fuck off please. Also, 'like' is a proper word, overused by dummies or not. That's a double fuck off, for those counting. Nobody listens to Flo Rida anymore, either. Stop living in the past you know; start embracing the future you don't. Goddamn, though, are high school graduates getting roasted and skewered. I wouldn't dare stand up for them even if I was brave. If you hate the youth, keep in mind you will not go wanting for like-minded company. Unless you live with the poor, the open-minded and progressive, or in a city.

Check out these ratings. Can you spot the moderate? Are they correct? More importantly, I found there is a bizarre fixation on cursive handwriting as a measure of educational integrity or student intelligence. I think I speak for the youth and all rational individuals when I say that cursive has never done a fucking thing to advance any mind and is repulsively Victorian in all respects. Cursive is technically all muscle-memory and is revered only by calligraphists and elitists. Only natural-born draughtsmen and idle ladies have any chance of mastering cursive. 

I was taught how to write in cursive in elementary school and while cursive was a superior alternative to, say, grammar or art, it has never done a thing to advance my odds in the workforce. Cursive is secondary to mental rigor, the attainment of knowledge, and academic capability. Go ahead, smug comfortable elitist youth-hating duffers, send out some resumes written in impeccable cursive and see how many fawning replies you get. Printed handwriting is functional and fundamentally essential, and even it is getting phased out by clattering keyboards in auditoriums, but you don't hear the true intellectual die-hards getting upset about that yawning abyss. That's because intellectuals know better than to care, and have better things to do as well!

Hey, cool, a libertarian who ascribes a shadowy conspiracy to the effects of apathy. I have to say I prefer ageists to libertarians and conspiracy theorists, because ageists are typically somewhat limited in their bigotry and suspicion, and often hold rational viewpoints when their bile doesn't get the best of them. An educated population is malleable as any other, and the majority tend to spew out the same ideology as their educators. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

"Goddamn trendy reality shows corrupting our youth. Goddamn teachers making hundreds of thousands a year to deal with generation after generation of apathetic, cranky, narcissistic, and uncooperative youths. Just gouging my taxpayer wallet, unlike the police, social services, or the incompetent politicians I vote for every year. Those goddamn teachers!" Most of these posts are probably the result of a think tank with a broad agenda, but if you begin to ascribe each post to a different person, it is easy to be shocked and dismayed. By the way just kill yourself already if you have ever watched reality TV. I'll join you suicides later, I just want to see who's left to post bitter and disrespectful user comments about it.

This is some tired reasoning, right here. Fuck it. I'm tired. I'll just grant them that all engineering students are infallible, god-like polymaths who cannot be fooled. It's not all the youth, nor is it a flawed education system. Nor are our ideas of education outdated or flawed. It's just those perennial suckers who go in for humanities and soft sciences. Goddamn idiots: can't spell, can't do geography, can't do simple math. "Go smoke pot in jail or at a dead end job, instead of making universities rich while you extend your childhoods! Losers!" That final post is a genius bit of satire from what I can only assume is a high-level troll. I would never tangle with someone who is too stupid to use a comma properly – that's a good way to get trolled, stabbed, or shot.

Nothing gets more hate than the truth, it seems. Ironically, this is one of the least reactionary and most understanding user comments thus far. Sure, it is a reductio ad absurdum, but it works. People complain about the economy when they're not complaining about the youth, and never make a damned lick of sense either way. Lots of people do this, but not everyone is fooled. The above post is one by another hero, as much as I disagree with the idea that a plumber has to be a proud ignoramus.

"And they can't even knap flint like their forebears! Outrageous! They don't even know how to load muskets! They wouldn't even fight the Reds if they invaded! Nothing's like it was! It's all going downhill thanks to the youth. What a bunch of lazy, ignorant, ungrateful, disrespectful hooligans these days!" The more things change, eh? The 70's also had leaded gas, the Cold War, and almost-satirical levels of sexism. QED: your era is just as shitty as any other, despite the excellent cocaine or lack of BS.

Blowing up aliens and crashing cars is and always has been rad as hell. Don't knock what you don't understand, Grandpa, you had hundreds of Nazis and Communists to kill, the DEA didn't exist yet, there weren't suburbs everywhere, and women in your time got laughed out of court when they got uppity. Whatever, though, it's a boys vs. girls thing and boys definitely fare worse. Boys these days, am I right? Disrespectful. Why, they even smile in photographs and act like sissies! In my day a boy knew how to whittle an arrow, survive in the deepest wilderness, and skin and cook a fish. Come to think of it I will side with Grandpa. Boys need to shape the fuck up (See 'Moonrise Kingdom', imagine it in a post 70's suburban setting).

Yep. Imagine how many posts followed this line of reasoning. Everyone knows that political science and business students are not full of shit, and the clear superiority of pragmatic engineering students has been widely documented. "Fuck the rest and salt their wounds. Bunch of dummies, is what they are. Bunch of god damned, socialist dummies, and no-good women. Nothing wrong with my time or any other, long as we're going into the past. The future is clearly doomed. Bunch of dummies. God damned idealists. Bleeding-heart liberals! Hippies! Let them rot, I say..."

A profoundly exhausting and disturbing User Comment Rodeo, hinting at a mass sickness that will never die. This is the kind of thing I mean when I bring up ageism in conversation, just before people stare blankly at me. It's complex. For each generation there are different opportunities, different challenges, different shortcomings, but don't worry – nobody will doubt the timeless worth of an Engineering Degree. Each generation has to eat its share of shit, but you'd think people would eventually smarten up. You'd think a young person's odds would get more humane as the world begins to get truly and deeply unbalanced and crazy.

Well. Good thing is it's just the internet talking. The internet is full of people full of opinions, none of whom have anything better to do. So do take a deep breath and smile, and be thankful that user comments are for idiots and followed and reported on only by sloppy bloggers. There's a whole real world out there, where people are generally laughed at and held to account for holding forth on their terribly small-minded, poorly-worded opinions. Be careful out there, though: you never know who's the user making those insipid comments or who's encouraging them.